Mark Bouris reckons any form of payroll tax is ‘nonsense’

“You’re an employer, you pay payroll tax, you pay your employees. Because you employ people, you now have to pay tax. That’s not the sort of thing you expect on the monopoly board. I mean I can’t believe this thing even exists today,” he said.

“Why you have to pay tax based on the amount of people you employ is just the greatest nonsense of all time. I mean, talk about something completely irrelevant in terms of raising tax.”

In NSW, payroll tax must be paid by employers that pay total monthly wages in excess of $1.2 million. The current payroll tax rate is 5.4 per cent.

Mr Bouris said applying payroll tax to mortgage aggregators that have relationships with mortgage brokers will send the industry into a tailspin, as aggregators would be loath to pass that payroll tax onto the broker.

“The aggregators don’t get enough margin between what they receive and what they pay out to be able to pay it themselves or to make it a sustainable business,” he said.

“I see this as the most draconian move by a state government ever. I’ve never seen a government off the bat, straight after COVID-19, when borrowers are doing it tough and lenders aren’t being able to lend as much and brokers aren’t making as much money and aggregators aren’t making as much money, to all of a sudden hit them with this.”

Mr Bouris said he has raised the issue with NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, who promised to get back to him.

“I think after the state election we will see some better interaction between the FBAA and maybe the MFAA and whoever our Premier is,” he said.

“This needs to be looked at a policy level, as opposed to a legislation level, because the policymakers need to say if there’s potential here for aggregators to be taxed based on the amount of people who are contractors, at best contractors, who come under that aggregation platform.”

While the proposed payroll tax on aggregators is state based, Mr Bouris said it will have a detrimental effect on borrowers in regional towns where many banks have closed branches.

“What is someone in Orange going to do, if they can’t go to a broker? Because brokers won’t be able to exist because they won’t be able to pay payroll tax. It’s a nonsense,” he said.

“These brokers don’t work for us. They don’t work for me as a contractor or as an employee. I don’t have a clue what they do. All I do is make sure that I provide them the gateway they’ve got to go to the banks and I pay them their share of the commission that we both get. We’re partners.”

[Related: Industry seeks written confirmation on payroll tax moratorium]